She feels as if she cannot breathe, as if the weight of the silence that separates them is pressing down on her chest. The words make no sense to her, and neither do the dizzying surges she feels of both joy and rage. She feels confused by herself. Her mouth opens. Her heart triples its beat, but all she can say is, “You?”
Pim draws in a long breath through his nostrils and then releases it. “It was Miep who gave it to me,” he tells her. “She and Bep had salvaged it from the floor the day the Gestapo arrived, and they kept it safe, waiting for you to return. But after . . .” he says thickly, “after we thought that you wouldn’t be coming home . . .” His voice trembles as he yanks out his handkerchief to blot his eyes. “That was the day. That was the day,” he tells her, “that my life ended as well, Anne. It was. But then”—he puffs breath into his chest, his lip quivering—“then comes Miep walking into my office with . . . with her arms filled,” he says, wiping at his eyes and steadying himself. “She comes into my office and sets a stack of books and papers in front of me, saying, ‘Here, Mr. Frank, is the legacy of your daughter Anne.’”
Silence.
Pim gazes pleadingly at her, begging her to understand as an empty space expands between them. “It saved me, Anne,” her father whispers. “It saved my life. Because it brought you back to me.” He sniffs, stuffs away his handkerchief, shaking his head in wonder. “Such a gift,” he tells her. “That was my thought. My daughter had such a gift. I was stunned by what you wrote. Stunned and humbled. And then, out of thin air it seemed, you appeared. You appeared, alive, and my heart soared.” He laughs, a sudden heave of joy in his voice.
“But . . .” says Anne, and she bites down on her lip before she can continue, “but you still kept my diary.”
Once more Pim’s face drops. He must nod his head to this, and he clears his voice of emotion. “I couldn’t help but feel that it was,” he starts to say, “and you may not credit this, but I couldn’t help feeling that it was mine now. Can you make any sense of that?”
No reply.
“When you returned to Amsterdam,” says Pim, “having survived such torture, you were so very different. No longer my little kitten. Of course, how could you be the same? How could any of us ever be the same? And yet I felt that the diary . . . it was all I had left of the Annelies I’d known. That child whom I had adored.”
Anne stares. “So for all this time . . . you kept this secret. Miep kept it,” she says, and swallows the first trace of anger in her voice.
“Please. Don’t blame her,” Pim begs. “You owe our dear friend Miep a debt of gratitude,” he instructs Anne. “It was she who saved your diary from oblivion—and at great personal risk, I might add. If the Gestapo man had returned, as he had threatened he would, all he would have needed to do was open the wrong drawer and disaster would have followed.”
“What about your new wife?” Anne asks heavily.
“Anne.”
“Has Dassah read it, Pim?” She feels a rush of humiliation, imagining her stepmother’s eyes on the pages of her diary. Imagining Dassah reading all the judgmental complaints Anne had penned about Mummy, and Anne helpless to edit out a single painful memory, a single ugly thought.
“No one else but me has ever read a single sentence. I can assure you of that. Please. You must believe,” Pim tells her, “that no one disrespected your privacy. You must see that Miep’s intentions were always to keep your writings safe for your return. She didn’t even tell me what she had. Until”—he shakes his head—“until we thought you were lost to us. And then afterward it wasn’t Miep’s or Bep’s decision to keep it a secret from you.” Her father scowls miserably. “It was my request that they keep silent. It was my request that they were honoring,” he says. “Quite definitely against her better judgment, in Miep’s case especially. She thought that I was doing you a great wrong.”
“And weren’t you?”
Pim’s eyes widen. He sucks in breath and shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he answers. “Honestly, I never meant to keep it secret from you. Not really. Perhaps you’re too angry to believe that right now, but it’s true,” he says. “There were many times, many times,” he repeats, “that I intended to tell you. But I simply . . . I simply couldn’t bring myself.” Pim pauses. Puts his hand to the side of his head and runs his fingers gently over his hair. “I suppose in a manner of speaking I was frightened. Frightened that if I handed over your diary, I would be losing you all over again.”
She stares at him.
“It still does frighten me,” he assures her.
“Where is it?” is all she can ask.
Her father gazes at her face, then expels a breath.
• • •
In the private office, he shuts the door behind them. Sitting down at his desk, he produces a brass key from the pocket of his waistcoat and uses it to unlock the large drawer on the bottom left. She hears the scrape of the drawer as it slides open.
“So here, my dear, dear Annelies,” her father says soberly as he plants the drawer’s contents firmly on his blotter, “is your diary.”
Silence blocks out any words.
They both stare at the stack of notebooks, one atop the other, the multicolored diary pages, loose-leaf. White, gray, salmon. Cheap wartime pulp, whatever kind of paper Miep and Bep could scrounge.
And then the red tartan plaid daybook from Blankevoorts. Anne feels a stillness enter her heart. How small it looks now. How light it feels when she picks it up.
“I hope,” says Pim, “that you will be able to forgive an old man for his many mistakes.” This is her father’s prayer. But Anne cannot yet answer it. Gingerly unclasping the lock, she lifts the cover, and her eyes land on the snapshot of a dark-eyed child attached to the page of inky script. The girl she once was. The Anne who was once her. A horrific intimacy floods her breast as she reads the first line: I hope I shall be able to confide in you completely, as I have never done in anyone else before.
Her legs weaken, and she drops into the chair opposite Pim’s desk, clutching the daybook. The tears are warm on her cheeks. “You were wrong, Pim,” she whispers. “It was never yours. It was always only mine.”
And as if he is struck by lightning, Pim bursts into a sob. He shakes his head, fumbling for his handkerchief. “I’m sorry, Anneke. I’m sorry,” he says, wadding the handkerchief into his eyes. “I’m so sorry.” Gently, he tries to mop himself up, saying, “I have made so many foolish choices. So many. There are times that I think there’s been a terrible mistake. That God . . .” he says, and blows his nose into his handkerchief, “that God never intended that I should leave Auschwitz alive.”
Anne gazes at him, still hugging her diary.
“I remember my poor Mutz, and I can’t help but think,” he says, “that it’s your sister’s spot I’ve taken. It seems to me that God would much prefer the children to have survived than an old man of limited worth.” He sniffs, blots his eyes again, and refolds his handkerchief, clearing his throat with a thick rumble up from his chest. “But now. Now I must think not of myself but of my daughter, Anne. Her diary has been returned to its rightful owner, and I hope it will remind her of the girl I so adored. The girl she once was. The girl who she could become again. That,” he tells Anne, “is my greatest prayer.”